Sunday, June 20, 2010

Is the notion of an interdisciplinary course of study such a crazy thing? Or are we really to believe that all ways of studying the world can be divided into some man-made categories like "physics" or "history"? I mean, I think "interdisciplinary" would cover things like neuroeconomics, which combines neurobiology and economics. It doesn't diminish either one, in fact, I'd say most people would agree that it enhances both. So why is the idea of an "interdisciplinary program" considered something to deride?

I don't know the answer to that, and that's why I haven't been making fun of the concept recently. But I do suspect that it's related to an obsession with keeping one's chosen area of study "pure" and untainted by the methods and theories of any others. It's the same mindset that produces comics like this, or this, or this (or, for a non-xkcd example, this Abstruse Goose, which seems almost willfully ignorant of what political science actually is). Now, if this comic had the psychologists attacking the physicists with large objects, I might think otherwise. But as it is, it fits into this pattern of comics where xkcd not only makes fun of non-math-physics-computer-science fields, but seems to actively hate them and wish them harm (the alt-text especially plays into this).

Anyway, that's mainly what bothers me with this comic. It's also true that the whole concept ("in this class, we try to hit each other!") is pretty dumb, and so far removed from reality that it stops being funny and just starts being confusing. The caption, saying that this is part of an even broader context of crazy classes mocking the "interdisciplinary" idea, and - I don't know. I just stare at the screen and wonder why this was made.

115 comments:

Looking even at the basic set up of the joke is wrong- it's sort of like the Tetris Hell joke- the key word "interdisciplinary" is the title and is used in the setup, so by the time you get to the end your already sick of the punchline and the comic has no flow. And the whole comic is pointless anyway.

A joke like this should work on two levels. The idea of interdisciplinary programs being a farce (which Carl covered) and the specific example being funny.

Here, the example is unfunny. And worse, it barely involves the two things it is combining. Randall's attempt to champion physics, or to pass himself off as someone who -can- represent hard science, falls apart when the best representation he can come up with is a pendulum doing nothing but swinging at something. And how is psychology involved? Running from a pendulum is a behavior, sure, but so is every action. I suspect the idea is that psychology students are so stupid that they would agree to be swung at, proving their own minds to be "faulty". It's dumb and petty.

Ken, I can't believe for an instant that it's that in depth. I honestly think Randall picked a "non-hard science" major at random and the joke would have been the same if he picked Art History or Music or something else that he's deemed worthless.

Gah! I must agree! It annoys me so much that somehow Physics and math students are SOOOOOOOOO vastly superior. Personally I like math...but why the fucking hell does randall have such a fucking superiority complex!? Is application inherently bad???

!t's not as if he's digging out pure, inherent truths. He acts so smug and "I am teh awesome math-physics-compsci guy" when in reality he is a sad fuck who uses rudimentary concepts in order to appeal to the incredible awkward nerds of the high school world who have had it drilled into their heads that one day they will win.

Oh, and wait. This fucker, Randall Munroe, who thinks he's so fucking awesome with his disciplinary superiority is a fucking failure of an artist and comedy writer. Forgive me, but is that hard science? I have a great idea for the next comic in his fucking pile of shit: "this is an interdisciplinary course where we have awkward failures of science majors create cave drawings they can laugh at." Does that strike to close to home randy?

While we're at it...one panel? Really? You live off a comic you publish three times a week that probably takes 5 seconds to sketch out. How the fuck long can it possibly take you to sketch out a few more ideas. Admittedly this would probably end up being a shitpile anyway so...

Oh and, If you'd ever been any good at anything involving stories, you know that showing is better than telling, but I guess that's just fucking impossible for you, you lazy dumbass. Randall Munroe, sit your fucking ass down for an extra 30 minutes out of you horribly over-scheduled life three times a week and draw out whatever the fuck you want to draw. DO NOT FUCKING DESCRIBE IT IN A FUCKING PARAGRAPH!!! Use awefully stereotypical looking chara--oh wait you use fucking stickfigures, my bad. use stereotypical props to indicate who is what and why, create bizzare and escalating scenes, build the madness, have a punchline, fuck it! THINK ABOUT YOUR FUCKING CHICKEN SCRAWLINGS FILLED IN WITH CHICKEN SHIT!!!

While I'm still blowing off the enormous build of rage and resentment: HOW ABOUT YOU FUCKING DISTINGUISH CHARACTERS!?!?! I know our glorious lord carl likes to say this and everything else I'm saying: WHY THE FUCK ARE THE OBSERVERS THE SAME AS THE STUDENTS!?!? ARE YOU INCAPABLE OF GIVING THEM EVEN THE SLIGHTEST DISTINGUISHING MARK!!

Well, now that I've let loose that spew of well deserved explitives and criticism I'd like to ask why everyone has to ridicule the other fields? I mean, aren't we all just exploring some aspect of existence using the tools at our disposal and seeing the wonders that emerge, and of course using those to help think about the world.

Get out of my head Randall. I don't want your fucking chicken-shit in there. Get out of all of our heads. Go take a break, maybe oneday you can return with another batch of glory, but for now, you are just the sad fuck that is randall munroe.

In an effort to see this comic as less condescending (but no less shitty), I see it this way: it's not so much that he's mocking interdisciplinary studies as he's taking them TO THE EXTREEEEEEME!!!, because that's what the younguns think is funny these days, I guess. The caption says the profs were competing to get funding or whatever for the most far-fetched thing. He's not saying that all interdisciplinary programs are retarded, just the ones that are meant to be retarded.

Another way to bring a tiny bit of good to this comic is to imagine the gray people "in the distance" to be Black-haired Stick Girl's internal visualization of herself swinging a pendulum at the asshat who's talking at her. "That'd shut him up," she thinks to herself. But in her heart she knows the only way to make him stop his yammering is to stroke his ego. "Promising!" she says, with forced enthusiasm, as she slowly backs away behind Talking Stick Man's clone.

In short, the only way to enjoy this comic is to intentionally re-cast the entire premise. Also, imagine better artwork. That shit is terrible.

I agree that this comic is poorly conceived and horribly executed, but I kind of sympathize with the underlying sentiment.

After several years of reading inside-baseball stuff, I think the biggest problem with "interdisciplinarity" as it's practiced is a version of the "philosophy yielded science" problem: once a humanistic discipline starts producing results that are interesting to non-liberal-artists, it gets spun off as its own discipline. (Your neuroeconomics example fits in here.)

A second problem is the fact that some of the most vocal proponents of interdisciplinarity are...kind of whacked. This is not to imply that the concept or even most of the proponents are insane, just that the ones who've seized the megaphone are nutty. They're the ones who insist that poets have something interesting to introduce into science (which may be true) while at the same time demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of what scientists do (which undermines whatever case they're trying to make).

If Randall had ever demonstrated awareness, and appreciation, of what humanistic pursuits are about, this comic could be read as a demonstration to these misguided people of why their suggestions for interdisciplinary programs are misguided. As it is, though, it's just another example of Randall's fuckery.

The sad thing about all of this is Randall enshrines certain areas of study as more "pure", but he does the fields he supports a great disservice. Even in comic 435 he manages to eschew the fact that mathematicians and logicians get into veritable brawls over the axioms that found mathematical knowledge. Saying Math is somehow pure and always true is an awful thought terminating cliché that discourages people from actually seeing the beauty within the subject. This hate for the "impurity" of other fields probably stems from the fact that he cannot articulate the nuances within his own.

What came to mind tangentially reading this comic was the Sokal affair.

As in, hell yeah interdisciplinary programs are full of shit, and wouldn't it be funny to play pranks through them!

Except...are interdisciplinary programs full of shit?And even if they are, isn't this the lamest prank ever?

I mean really, did Randy think anyone (even in cartoon land) would find that program in anyway plausible?If so, holy shit no seriously stop.If not, why did he think his audience would laugh at obvious strawmen? Strawmen aren't funny.

* * *

What Randy needs is a Carl Sagan-type figure to leave off how fascinating the natural world is for a moment and point out also how fascinating people and societies and politics and communication and art are.

For a guy in his mid/late-twenties, the superiority thing is getting old.

his problem seems to be basically that he thinks that these things are really great and exciting, he just thinks that he understands them perfectly and that people who are studying them don't know them any better than he does (cf. 451). he thinks he's an expert in psychology and political science and human behavior in general. his superiority complex isn't that he thinks these fields aren't good fields, but that he thinks they are entirely unnecessary because any idiot can read about them on Wikipedia and become an instant expert (despite the fact that even if this were true he's still piggybacking on the works of real scholars).

Also, Matt P + the Anon below him: yeah it bothers me that Randy seems plain ignorant (as you guys aren't) that1) his purest of subjects, maths, is arguably preceded by logic and analytical philosophy.And2) That the empiricist tradition from which science stems is only one school of philosophy among many, and as such the entire scientific project is dependent on a particular theory of metaphysics, and is (very) arguably preceded by metaphysics.

Either Randy hasn't considered philosophy's place in the spectrum of "which is the purest", or he's equated it with a crude stereotype of the arts and post-modernist relativism.Either way it's more than a little naive.

I was just going to point out the same thing - Randall's "fields arranged by purity" arguably cut out both philosophy and metaphysics, which are more pure. And then, there is the fact that, despite effort to the contrary, it is still impossible to be completely objective, which means that many thoughts still must be taken in context of a larger culture in order to analyze them properly.

Also, if a thought does not, in some way, directly or indirectly, lead to some sort of real-world effect, then it's really just masturbation. Now, I'm all in favor of a little mental masturbation, but sooner or later, you'll realize that while other people are working with and affecting the world while you've been fucking yourself.

Finally, a lot of great work has come as a result of two fields coming together and trading ideas. A lot of the formative members of our modern sciences were interested in a wide range of subjects, and I'd be willing to wager that the interaction between various fields is the most important element in the development of new fields of study and new thoughts.

(I was actually interviewed by my university newspaper as being, "the computer science guy who cares about humanities," so as you might suspect, the ridiculous bifurcation of fields of study into relevant and irrelevant is something which I feel very strongly about.)

Man yeah the latest comic is stupid bullshit. It's just the infinitely smug "Haha credibility and professionalism are things of the past. It's all about CROWDSOURCING baby! Who cares where information comes from? Any bit of data, true or false, relevant or irrelevant, is as good as any other bit of data, and the blogosphere churns out data FAR faster than your OLD MAN newspapers!"

The form of reporting I'm most concerned with is the tendency to "report the controversy", which is to say give scrupulously equal time to both sides of an issue and avoid letting things like "facts" bias the discussion, preferring instead some bastardized notion of editorial neutrality. "Some people say this and others say that and who can know the truth? Certainly not reporters."

But Randall's point of view seems more like an excuse to be ignorant--"All the old media are irrelevant, and all the new media are arbitrary, so there's no reason to know what's going on in the world. If I want to follow nothing but the trivialities of robotics and blockbuster films, I can! It's great."

Not to defend Randall, but the relationship between philosophy and mathematics doesn't much resemble (to me, anyhow) the relationship between mathematics and sciences.

For one, mathematics has its own study of the aspects of logic that it cares about (mathematical logic). Merely declaring "logic is philosophy" is rather naive itself. Even when analytic philosophers study logic, it's with aim to make the reasoning in various arguments more explicit/clear, or to ask questions like "what is truth?" It's hard for me to imagine someone seriously saying, "the correspondence theory of truth was very helpful in making the formulation of my mathematical theory easy."

The sciences pick out mathematical theories that fit what they're modeling. I suppose it may be true that some people choose mathematical theories based on philosophical considerations. For instance, I'm sure early intuitionists and developers of constructive mathematics were motivated by philosophical objections to the law of the excluded middle and the like. But all you really need to motivate constructive mathematics is the observation that it is the internal logic/mathematics of computability, or of topological spaces and continuous maps. Those topics are interesting to people independent of what the right philosophical position on the law of the excluded middle is.

So, to me, it seems that while mathematics and philosophy may have some interest in the same areas, a statement like "mathematics is just applied philosophy" is confused at best.

Maths don't even solve all our problems. For example, how can you possibly math away the current oil spill? You surely shouldn't add to it, and multiplying it only makes thing worse. Try dividing it but you just end up with multiple spills instead of one big one! There's no solution to this problem.

this can't be a more obvious question, but why does randall seem to take it as inarguable fact that hard science is the only true and worthwhile life pursuit, when all he does when he's not espousing that belief is drawing idealist, escapist carpe-diem-fuck-the-system-and-come-be-random-with-me masturbation fodder?

and for obvious question number two: in the newest comic, is randall munroe, of all people, accusing others of PANDERING?

I didn't know the superfluity of uninformative "man on the street" interviews was the result of internet social networking. Given how long they've been doing it, the media must be much more prescient than anybody realised.

'So, to me, it seems that while mathematics and philosophy may have some interest in the same areas, a statement like "mathematics is just applied philosophy" is confused at best.'

Depends which bit of mathematics you're thinking of; partial differential equations less so, number theory (cf Bourbaki) rather more so. Russell did a fair bit of work at the start of the 20th century to put mathematics on a sound philosophical basis, but that doesn't have much significance when you're dealing with more applied areas.

But this whole "X is just applied Y" isn't too helpful, if only because you miss out on lots of emergent meaning. "You're not really thinking! There's just a certain set of electrical states inside your head as described by physics" would apparently be sound, if psychology was just applied biology was just applied chemistry was just applied physics.

Well, it's probably true that Russell was motivated by philosophical considerations, but you don't really have to be there, either. A formal theory containing a contradiction and explosion lets you prove everything, and that's pretty obviously not what you want out of it. You only want your rule system to validate certain things, not everything. If you're capable of deriving a contradiction, your rule system is not helping you as much, because even after a proof that doesn't explicitly go through false, you have to eyeball it and make sure you didn't do anything suspicious.

The same problem can be cast in a computer science setting, where you ask, "how do you know you didn't write any infinite loops?" And the answer is that you can't in general, you can only eyeball it, unless you use a system that is incapable of writing infinite loops at all, but that necessarily excludes some perfectly valid programs.

But yes "X is applied Y" is often unhelpful. Almost every science is applied math in a way, but you need empirical observations to know what math to apply, so it isn't just math at that point. And most stuff reduces to physics in principle, but that's practically useless.

And the historical development even goes in reverse. Chemistry is applied physics because the part of physics that gives rise most directly to chemistry is what you get when you drill down through chemistry enough. And Newton developed calculus to do physics (and find the volume of various solids, maybe).

Current comic: do we have a category for "HAHA the old media sucks AMIRITE?"Jesus Christ I mean I've seen sketches mocking 'man on the street' interviews on primetime BBC1. The Day Today was doing it back 1994, and it really can't be hard to find earlier examples.Also why does politician-guy, presumably supposed to be the clever one as opposed to the newsreader, look like a crazy? That is not the hair of a balanced and rational man.

Ann Apolis:Actually, I remember interviews with "just some people on the streets" being done quite hilariously on several occasions by certain flying circus(es). So yeah... Dead parrot comic coming up next?..

Does it bother nobody else just how damn tiny the arms of these guys are?I mean, stick figures, limited detail, personal style, yak yak yak, but look at 'em. His head is as large as his armspan. Check out your own arms! Even with your fancy necks, I think you'll find that your head is about only elbowspan high.Maybe it's an attempt at foreshortening (read: maybe an excuse that could be offered is "it was intended to be foreshortening,") but the stick figures really don't lend themselves to it ._.Doop doop commenting on the art because there's no joke worth mention.

An interesting post on this blog might be about a series of stick-figure comics, in an effort to show that you can have pictures that are simple but not crude.

When I saw "pendulum" in this comic, I immediately thought of that episode on Bill Nye where they explained that a pendulum swinging back at you wouldn't go as high as it was when you dropped it, so they tried to see if people would duck out of the way when they saw the pendulum coming. I thought the comic intended some kind of psychological experiment to see if people actually care about what physics says when there's a pendulum coming at their face. Although after thinking about it, it would have made more sense if the psychology students were hitting the physics students, and we couldn't possibly have anything that insulted physics students, that would be terrible.

I like the classic subject verb disagreement in his latest. it should be "The media...now merely reports" instead of Randy's "The media...now merely report." (The media is not plural, no matter how much Randal wants it to be).

The media are plural. It's the Latin plural of medium (as in, medium of communication). In modern usage it's become increasingly common and acceptable to treat it as singular, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to treat as plural, just a bit old-fashioned.

I saw the new comic and I was like, "Wait, the guy who culls an endless stream of comics from Wikipedia is harping about the inadequacies of getting info from the web?" And then things went white and when i woke up there was blood because I had passed out and hit my head.

But wait, that didn't actually happen I FOOLED YOU ON THE WEB. Haha guys, Randall is soooo right in his comic he posted on the web.

Randall just made a comic out of a nerdy high school student's doodles—scribbled in their notebook while not paying attention in English class—about how much everything except math and science sucks and is stupid. Not surprisingly, since he devalues everything that's not directly related to math, he is a poor artist and writer and who therefore lacks the necessary skills to create a good comic.

However, those who also share the same superiority complex do not care about things like comedic timing, effective art, and well-crafted jokes in general because these things are related to English and Art and those things are below them. As long as there is some vague reference to math and science and how math and science is THE BEST they will think it is also THE BEST because it validates their biased mindset. So they buy polo shirts with stick figures on them so they can show they are a part of THE SUPERIOR CULT!

And Randall Munroe is therefore able to make a goddamn fucking living (are you fucking kidding me?!?) out of selling validation to awkward teenagers.

Yes, while it is correct that media is the plural form of medium, I would argue that while it can be correct to use it as a plural in English, common usage is skewed towards using media as a singular noun when in reference to "the news".

Additionally, I fail to see any possible reason Randal would have used media as a plural (as, at least to me, it just sounds "wrong"), except if he is explicitly using its original, plural form (making it take a plural verb) to feel superior to anyone who would apply the common usage.

#756 could not even met the low, low bar we've set for XKCD. It's not as bad a drawing of a fucking vagina, but I think we can all agree: it's bad. Why is it so bad though?

This comic is part of Randall's ongoing incoherent war against the media. See 558 and 727, both of which lampoon something that, we can all agree, is absolutely ridiculous. Perhaps for the first time, he's pointed out something that is actually legitimate: the media replacing the news with uninformed viewer opinion. Of course, by making this comic, Randall isn't implicating himself. Of course not. Randall, and by extension all of the XKCD fans, have important, insightful things to say on the state of the media in this country. His opinion is important, but all those people that didn't major in Math and Science so that they cannot observe important things, such as a million is *bigger* than a billion, have nothing to contribute.

This is also a really week attempt at a joke. One panel. One. Randall is no Gary Larson, and he really needs those extra panels to flesh out the joke. For example, he could have had the non-Math majors interviewed on the street say something ridiculous. He could have showed a humorous interview with the politician, followed by said non-Math majors.

The alt-text is also week. The selling snow cones thing could be funny if we actually *saw* it. What's the point in having your work in comic format if we just have to read all the best stuff? What does the actual art add to this, other than the mildly funny politician with a hairpiece?

I HATE how Randall always tries to play himself off as an academic, when in REALITY, he has earned a measly B.S., spent a couple months in the field, and then separated entirely from any real intellectual pursuits (reading WIKIPEDIA doesn't count, asshole!). Contrast this with SMBC, where cartoonist Zach Weiner is a UC-Berkley physics grad student, who still finds time to write dailies, and pumps out videos once a week. Oh, and it's actually funny...

The bit that amuses me is, Randall has openly said Feynman and Mythbusters rock specifically because they weren't "pure". I guess he sees the humanities like a piece of grit inside an oyster or something.

756 would be better if it commented on how the media are increasingly likely to report on web-based "voices on the street" without knowing quite how they work.

(Eg, mentioning a Facebook page for relevance while forgetting there are pages for "join if you love picking your nose while no one is watching"; posting a screencap of a Twitter search complete with spam/ignorant posters/sponsored tweets; quoting from a blog about how the media are desperate to quote from blogs these days without attribution. Pretty sure there are others.)

It still wouldn't be good, but at least it would be slightly more relevant. I mean, ignorant vox pops were featured in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, way back when those two were young.

"Medium" is the singular (as in, "the medium is the message.") "Media" is the plural. Despite their Latin derivation, the noun/verb agreement rule holds true regardless of what language is being spoken.

Assuming I'm responding to the same Anon that wrote the 14:03 post: I was actually intending to address "It doesn't matter what it means in Latin because we aren't speaking/writing Latin," which I consider roughly on a par with "Why should I have to take a history class? I'm never going to do anything with history." The point about loanwords is well-taken.

"Media" in this context, is plural, because, in English as well as in Latin, "media" is the plural form. It is alright to say "media is", though, because everyone knows what you mean. It's just not technically correct. Kinda like "the data is". It'll be better to say "the datum is" but that just sounds weird.

hey, it's sje! man, I forgot about you. how's being completely useless working out for you?

you're actually right in that "media" is similar to "data;" both are used with a singular noun, because they no longer refer to a plural but to a single entity. they are both collective nouns! in the case of the "media," it is a collective noun referring to television, newspapers, and radios. in the case of "data," it's a collective noun which means "a body of facts."

it is not technically incorrect to use either of these uses! these are perfectly standard and acceptable uses. they're one of those things that only idiot pedants care about--like most of those things, the pedants are actually the ones who are in the wrong here, as anywhere.

My reaction to #755 Public Opinion was .... ??? Based on the illustration alone, the comic is maybe a 3.1/10 -- pretty obvious punch-line given the set-up. But then the alt-text just gives a whole new dimension of wtf, bringing the comic down to maybe a 1.8/10! I can't believe he thought that analogy would make sense in anyone's head but his. In fact, if anyone can explain how the hell that snow-cone joke is supposed to make sense, I would appreciate it.

Why are you all so angry about this? We all seem to jump to the conclusion that Randall is attacking interdisciplinary studies. Perhaps he's making the old "antics in academia" joke? I'd love to come up with another example, but sadly xkcd seems to be the only source of such humor which comes to mind. Originality?

In regards to that abstruse goose... The joke is the combination of the words "Political" and "Science." Political, in the word's association to bitter partisan feuding, is the point here, not an ignorance of what political science is.

In other words: science with political parties. Hilarious. Not ignorant. Get the joke?

Take your time with these rants, they're starting to look strained and desperate.

Just read Randall's bio myself. That's pretty commendable, though, really. Anyone can support themselves full-time with a good webcomic, but it takes a genius to support themselves with a crappy webcomic.

I was under the impression he worked full-time which was why the updates were 3 times a week despite the lack of any visible effort.

"'Media' in this context, is plural, because, in English as well as in Latin, "media" is the plural form. It is alright to say 'media is', though, because everyone knows what you mean. It's just not technically correct. Kinda like "the data is". It'll be better to say "the datum is" but that just sounds weird."

And yet you missed that he used the wrong transitive verb (are like instead of is like) in the alt-text.

Also, "is plural" (in your sentence) isn't an appositive, so you didn't need to set it off with commas. Also, the "It is" would sound better as a contraction; the 'though' after 'media is' would sound better as a conjunction linking that sentence to the next one (and you should remove the 'just' from it as well); the sentence after that is a sentence fragment; and the final sentence has an improper conjugation of the future tense of "to be" - the contraction for 'will be' instead of 'would be'.

My grammar knowledge is pretty well, actually, which is what five years of Latin'll do to ya. You're right about that comma, but I wasn't going for an appositive. I forgot the comma after "Media". Yes, I used a fragment, but it's still 100% perfect grammar, because, as Rob said, it's perfectly acceptable and understandable and all that. Which was my point with my original comment. Correct grammar is what everyone else around you understands. I'm not correcting anyone, really. I'm just saying don't be such prescriptivists.

Rob: being useless is alright! I actually just got a $5517 check from the gubberment last week. How are you?

sje46: Your knowledge of grammar is pretty "good," not well (three years of Latin speaking here). "Well" can be used as an adjective, but only really to refer to a person's health.

Back to the point: Has anyone seen my shoes? I've looked all over the apartment for them but they aren't anywhere. I want to go outside, but society frowns on barefootedness and there's a lot of broken glass which people seem to have just dumped on my stoop to trap me in here.

Oh crap, now they're throwing it at the window... Well folks, that's what you get when you flip off a religious figure.

"My grammar knowledge is pretty well, actually, which is what five years of Latin'll do to ya. You're right about that comma, but I wasn't going for an appositive. I forgot the comma after "Media". Yes, I used a fragment, but it's still 100% perfect grammar, because, as Rob said, it's perfectly acceptable and understandable and all that. Which was my point with my original comment. Correct grammar is what everyone else around you understands. I'm not correcting anyone, really. I'm just saying don't be such prescriptivists."

It was a satire of attempts to correct grammar? I dunno, I just found it ironic (alternately, hypocritical) that you were talking about how grammar "should" sound yet messed up a load on grammar. But then I started a sentence with a conjunction which got Anon 1:10s panties in a bunch. I bet he still thinks that the only exception to "i before e" is when it sounds like "ay" as in "neighbor" and "weigh".

Y'know the odd thing? Everyone's been complaining so much about how the whole smugness thing and how Randall loves utterly bashing media and social networking that nobody seems to point out that the comic is not only funny, but a literal "Randall says this, and then it happens"! It's the kinda thing Least I Could Do gets lambasted for, but even that always ties in a joke into it!Alt Text is ridiculously stupid. It's a fancy "Doing X is like somebody that did something wrong". Only while making a mockery of the deaths of hundreds... for no apparent reason. Even the 9/11 one had to require that as a setting for the joke to work, but practically any setting would've worked here!

@Jhum:*checks*Wow, you're actually right! His ENTIRE life experience, not counting any freelance programming he may or may not actually do, is one bachelor degree in physics and literally just half a year of work experience! And the worst part is that everyone keeps referencing him as being a former NASA roboticist, despite only being there for 6 months!

I mentioned in either this thread or the one before that the biggest science elitists are the ones who've studied the least-

And here we have the king of high-school science elitists, and his education consists of a BS and token work experience in NASA.

Well- I'm not sure, but maybe I should feel vindicated? I mean, the way Randall harps on about SIENS and PIE-FON I was expecting him to be a postgrad or a honours at least.What does everyone else think?

Rob, how can you possibly criticise Xkcd when you talk so much about "pedants" being wrong. This has to be the most pedantic blog on the net, inventing faults to criticise a comic that millions find joy in.

"Inventing" faults? We probably also conjure up reasons for these imaginary faults from the Land of Wishes and Sherbet to fit our obviously incorrect world view (or at least, our incorrect view of xkcd).

Wait a minute...

Anon 12:55 spelled "Xkcd" with one capital CLEARLY HE MUST BE A TROLL i must alert the internet!

Once you take your mind out of the bog of illogical thinking and double standards so typical of the liberal arts (which you get SO BUTTHURT about in this blag) You might even see your own faults, though your pride will never let you admit them.

It doesn't matter though, anyone can plainly see that you're in the wrong here, and just bullshitting to save time.

You children have fun with your little criticisms, but like it or not you're actually supplying Xkcd with more traffic,

Although it's hardly a mystery, "based on internet averages, xkcd.com is visited more frequently by males who are in the age range 18-24, have no children and browse this site from school".

##Oh, and I'm going to go ahead and put it out there that Randall probably thought "giving a greater voice [...] social web is so popular" was an appositive adjectival phrase for "News Reporters"...for some reason. The whole mass is clearly an awkward noun clause, but what in XKCD isn't [awkward]?

Also, anyone accidentally end up over at kxcd.com because of a typo? 'CAUSE JESUS IS MY BEST FRIEND! ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! haha.... brilliant. I hope they get lots of spillover traffic.

Yadda yadda yadda... seriously, are we going to have a grammar war? Cause, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Now, where I was? Oh, yes, that comment I was going to post but didn't do so cause I was not in the mood. I'm not, still, but only for thorough analysis of trite webcomics. So, quick comments.

As I said before, I don't think this comic here is about "pure" science being better than "impure" science(even though we know Randall is quite the science Shiite himself), or even about interdisciplinary courses being all bullshit, but about "interdisciplinary" having ascended to this cool buzzword status. He makes a joke exaggerating that, and that joke is bad. No, really, it is. I still keep wondering what the psychology student is supposed to contribute to, but, anyway, that could be a medical student and it'd be the same.

New comic? Meh. Trite. And let me just say, that politician looks AWFUL. So awful it needs to be said in all caps. FUCKEN AWFUL.

@RavenzomgAre you one of the people that visits xkcd.. maybe not on a daily basis, but reads every update?

I'm curious, but how many webcomics does the average person here 'follow' - i.e. read every update of? And how many do they follow entirely because said webcomic sucks?

I mean, there's an awful lot of bad webcomics out there. In fact, all webcomics with the exception of basically Achewood, SMBC and a couple that no longer update would fall under this category. Why is xkcd so special?

If Randall ran ads like SMBC did, he'd be laughing all the way to the bank.

O Hai, I'm a bit late to the party, but I for one found this XKCD to be moderately amusing.

Being involved in university politics, I can totally relate to the portrayed absurdity that interdisciplinary projects can achieve. E.g. we had one program involving Linear Algebra and Sports where on one week students would do some endurance training and the other week they had to solve matrix equations. Such interdisciplinary projects are often proposed to elicit additional funding from the (usually ignorant) authorities.

So Yeah, that's where the humor stems from in this one. The rest of the criticism still holds true. That is all :)

There isn't anything inherently wrong with it at face value. In fact, your reasoning that knowledge exists outside arbitrary divisions of fields of study is sound. It's the same reasoning that has led to a rise in interdisciplinary studies in academia.

The problem is that a lot of administrators that like the idea of interdisciplinary studies have taken it a little too far. It's like the emphasis has become reorganizing the way we solve problems, rather than ACTUALLY solving problems.

It's frustrating for many in academia. Especially because the the people pushing interdisciplinary studies sometimes aren't really experts in either field.

A professor once told me: "While there is value in finding ways to connect different fields of study, there's just as much value as exploring one specific thing in depth. Maybe more. So I don't understand this recent fetishism of interdisciplinary studies."

Basically, interdisciplinary studies sounds fancy when you only skim the surface of what various fields are trying to accomplish. Perhaps this is why it is attractive to administrators and laypeople.

But the value of going into depth in something can't be ignored. For interdisciplinary studies to achieve its potential, the infrastructure of academia would have to be one where someone can spend his or her life going in depth on a topic that lies between the arbitrary divisions of academia. While that has happened, in general that goal seems to have been lost, and all interdisciplinary studies has become is a superficial way to appeal to administration for funding.

I guess I've just never been exposed to the lamer side of interdisciplinary things. I've seen things like philosophy of science or the biology and sociology of AIDS and such. really interesting things.

also sometimes interdisciplinary studies are completely unnecessary. "women's studies," for instance, is utterly superfluous when there already exists sociology. a new field is simply not necessary there.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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